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Online digital music service provider South Asian Audio Video Network (Saavn) said the company will start video songs in India from middle of next year.
The company also plans to provide Bollywood movies in the next two years, where users can download movies made till now.
“There are around 60,000 of Bollywood movies since 1930s and we want them to available through digital formats. We will digitise all these movies and would make available to consumers by 2015-16,” Vinodh Bhat, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Saavn, told Business Line.
He said the company will work out on all the licensing agreements with Bollywood production houses such as Yash Raj Films before digitising all the movies.
He said the company gives access to one of the largest music libraries anywhere, with one million-plus tracks under licence, 90 per cent of the known catalogue across Bollywood, regional, and devotional music, with new releases added every day.
The company has also partnered with Google, Facebook, Shazam, Tata DoCoMo, HTC, Karbonn and other companies in India and globally to provide music to its listeners.
“We are in talks with many companies in India, which are Internet providers and mobile companies for partnerships. Many mobile companies (like Samsung, Micromax and others) would come up with Saavn app in near future. We want to make our services to every one,” he said.
He said there are around 11 million users per month globally, out of which two-thirds are in India, which will only grow in future. Headquartered in New York, Saavn has its largest users in the US, then follows UK, Canada, the West Asia and Asia (including India). “Feature phones market is still prevalent in India as only 10 per cent of around 700 million users are on smartphones. But, it is expected that there would be 500 million Android phone users within next couple of years, so we are focused on that,” he said.
To raise headcount
Bhat said that Saavn, which provides songs of 11 regional languages in India right now, will double that by next year. The company will also double its headcount to 120 globally by next year.
Most of the employees Saavn have come from media and technology companies such as MTV, Google, Yahoo!, Qualcomm and Microsoft, he added.
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